Social networks are booming with the development of the Internet technology. The social network includes websites and products that may provide connections between people, including but not limited to instant messaging products, social networking websites, chat rooms, BBS, virtual communities, online games, and so on. In the social network, a user may serve as a node, and there may be a direct buddy relationship or an indirect relationship between users. In other words, there may be an association relationship between nodes, or there may be a potential association relationship between the nodes. The social network may provide the potential association relationship between the nodes, which may facilitate the development of a relationship chain between the nodes, so that the potential association relationship may be transformed into the association relationship. In the social network, a user may be regarded as a target node. A node having the association relationship with the target node may be regarded as an association node, and a node having the potential association relationship with the target node may be regarded as a candidate node. For example, the association node is a buddy of the user and the candidate node is a potential buddy of the user. In this case, the potential buddy may indicate a user who may become a buddy of the user. By this manner, the potential buddy may be recommended to the user, so that an online relationship chain of the user may be developed.
In a traditional social network, the “association node and the candidate node” may be divided into two blocks for presenting to the target node. The target node only interacts data information with the association node, in which there is the association relationship between the target node and the association node. When the target node wants to interact with the candidate node having the potential association relationship with the target node, the candidate node may be required to be transformed into the association node. The target node may search a block where the candidate node locates for the data of the candidate node, which is inconvenient and difficult for the target node to quickly expand the relationship chain of the target node.